Red Hat OpenShift review

Red Hat was never content to be just a collection of Linux tools. Its new foray into the cloud, called OpenShift, offers a quick way to deploy Java, Python, PHP or Ruby apps to a collection of machines waiting to accept them.

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Red Hat was never content to be just a collection of Linux tools. Its new foray into the cloud, called OpenShift, offers a quick way to deploy Java, Python, PHP or Ruby apps to a collection of machines waiting to accept them.

When you're done developing, the Red Hat cloud offers a collection of tools for deploying your app on Amazon EC2.

OpenShift is not Java-centric by any means. Whether you create a Java app or another kind, it handles much of the deployment issues. The standard Java application is a JBoss Application Server 7 stack built by Maven. This is a fairly new option, and I didn't find it listed in the fancy HTML documentation. Instead, I stumbled on it by hitting -h on the command line.

Yes, OpenShift is a good tool for those who like to use the command line. I typed a few lines, and boom! A JBoss application was deployed, running and ready for customisation.

Updating is also simple. After you add lines, you commit to Git and push to the main server. This is more than a typical push though, because you can watch the Maven build executed automatically as the push triggers a deployment. Using a version control system to run a deployment is more and more common, especially because it makes rolling back easier. Choosing Git is a modern choice.

Once you hit the "push" button with Git, the code ends up in the Amazon EC2 cloud. You provide the account information and the Red Hat tool called Flex handles the deployment issues.

OUR VERDICT

You have 30 days of free trial if you want to experiment on Red Hat's dime. These tools are all said to be in beta and strictly for development work.